HackPerception

@JohnMarstonEvolve - I've PM'ed you the email contact for the enterprise support team - they're the team best equipped to help you break this down. Multi-user usage is technically possible using base-station 1.0 but the use-case is very limited and it's not recommended for safety and practicality reasons: You can only use 1 pair of 1.0 base-stations in a room/line-of-sight. You need to physically isolate 1.0 base-station pairs otherwise conflicts arise You can only cover about 5 meters diagonally with 1.0 stations It's not super safe to fit more than 1 or 2 users in the tracking volume provided by 1.0 base-stations. The risk of people running into each other and making physical contact with each other is very high at the play volumes supported by Using 2.0 is overall far far better for multi-user because: Larger tracked volumes = bigger play-volumes and larger buffers between players Support for multiple base-stations within the same room without conflicts No need for physical isolation between base-station pairs You can use anywhere between 1-4 stations to track each HMD - it's just more flexible overall The wider horizontal FOV enables more mounting positions. You cannot use 1.0 and 2.0 tracking in the same room/line-of-sight as each other without physical isolation 1.0 base-stations work with Vive and Vive Pro. 2.0 stations strictly work with Vive Pro and other 2.0 enabled devices (tracker 2018, Vive Pro controllers, Valve Index, Ect...) Vive 1.0 gear is either the discrete or the TS3633 sensor type in the matrix below. Vive Pro gear is generally on the TS4231 and newer revisions. Scenario 1 should work if deployed correctly - this doesn't make sense. Scenario 2 should also work if deployed correctly due to use of 1.0 stations Scenario 3 should also work if deployed correctly Scenario B1 should definitely work. I think something else is going on here.

@Jmels @Rich_BlackBox_VR, No - LPS support is not road-mapped for Vive Tracker 2019 due to changes in how event and haptics triggers work within SteamVR input 2.0 and the underlying SteamVR hardware firmware architecture. The old LPS methodology is no longer valid and breaks tracking under the new system. The new system apparently means that if we were to implement LPS, it would be very difficult to implement on the developer side to the point where it'd be impractical since LPS requires the event trigger to be sent to the tracker prior to a haptic event. There's a LBE company that's come up with a physical isolation methodology we're recommending for professional use cases. I'm checking now to see if I am allowed to refer you to them or if it's behind NDA.

@AlBAO: The limit was technically 16 - 11 is what's left open after accounting for Bluetooth receivers in the HMD, the controllers, and basestations. Valve updated the limit sometime last year to 64 but at the time of update that support hadn't trickled it's way into all of the SteamVR plugins. I haven't seen any other release notes from Valve about that specific topic since then - in the least, you'd probably have to update your project to the more recent SteamVR plugins. So in reality, the maximum number of trackers you can have in a space is entirely defined by the wireless conditions in your environment: Past ~16 trackers, you start to hit "co-channel interference". Bluetooth is simply not a wide spectrum and if you get a bunch of bluetooth devices in close proximity, they start to talk over one another and crowd each other out. When working with more than 10 trackers, I highly recommend disabling all 2.4Ghz WiFi networks in your space. Bluetooth is ~2.45Ghz and so 2.4Ghz WiFi adds to the co-channel interference problem and dramatically lowers your max device count. The trackers ship with a USB-cradle. The idea here is that you want the PC-side dongles spread out as far apart from one another so the transmitters don't talk over one another. If you cluster your dongles together - your performance and max device count will certainly take a hit. Most users report seeing performance issues as they start to cross past the 16 tracker mark but it's entirely dependent on your specific environmental factors. Each RF environment is different - there are no one size fits all answers beyond the pro-tips I posted above. I'd also like to call out the Vive Input Utility. It makes targeting specific trackers easier which can really count if you're working with a bunch of em'. @chengnay Do you have any feedback on this? Does VIU support higher device counts in recent updates?

@schwaBAM - I have never heard of ActiveX in the context of VR. I haven't heard that term since 2015 even - I thought it was a browser thing that's more or less only around for legacy support in some browsers? I'm going to say no in this case - I've never heard of anything regarding SteamVR and ActiveX. Most experiences including SteamVR itself will require DirectX if that's what you're talking about rather. When you start SteamVR for the first time - the first thing it does is verify your Direct X status and installs some Direct X related stuff.

The Cosmos External Tracking face-plate supports both 1.0 and 2.0 tracking. The Elite bundle ships with V1.0 controllers and basestations. The specific controllers in this bundle are not 2.0 compatible.

@It'sToast - From SteamVR's prospective, it just disappears suddenly as you can see in my screenie. The SteamVR compositor is stable enough in this case that it's able to continue and save the session once the HMD is back online. The connection and disconnection sound further indicate it's likely hardware related (i.e. a bad tether). It could be PC-related but that's super hard to troubleshoot without physical access to the PC. If it disconnected while you were moving around, that'd add to the evidence pile for it being a bad tether but you're saying it dropped off even if you're not touching the HMD/cable/PC at all? If this is the OG Vive; I'd recommend doing a linkbox bypass. It's my go to troubleshooting step on Vive 1. To do a bypass, you simply plug the orange USB and HDMI leads from the HMD's 3-in-1 teather and plug those directly into the PC rather than the linkbox. You'd need to keep the power lead flowing through the linkbox when doing this.

@Bassermann I'll send you an email address of you who can contact for vive.com order specific questions. We ship Vive hardware out to a huge number of countries. In most cases, we'll have a regional fulfillment partner - when an order is placed we transmit the fulfillment request to the fulfillment vendor who then executes the shipment. Fulfillment vendors are supposed to upload status updates on the order to our severs via API - the frequency and availability of that data being uploaded back to us can varies from fulfillment center to center so there can be delays in reporting. It's a pretty wide global fulfillment web so it gets region specific quickly. I'm not personally aware of any stock limitations in the EU.

@davide445 If you can mount your PC overhead in the center of the room, you can start to achieve larger wireless coverage but the PC-side transmitter is only rated for 6m range so the math works out that the biggest space you can achieve is about 10x10m which happens to coincide with the playspace for 4x2.0 stations. Mounting overhead is the only real workaround to add play volume. Otherwise, 6x6 is the range for a standard mounting scenario. Current inside out headsets don't do well past 2x2M playspaces - drift errors start to accumulate and get magnified. We generally do not provide loaners or evaluation equipment unless it's part of a larger partnership or agreement. We get thousands of these types of requests each quarter so it's generally unfeasible for us to operate such a program in any meaningful way.

@It'sToast - Nothing jumps out in the log that I saw. I see the part where it adds and then drops the devices but none of the other logs point to a reason why it dropped. Do you hear the windows connect/disconnect sound? If you move the HMD tether around, does it trigger the drop?

No version of Cosmos sports native eye tracking. Vive Pro Eye is the only Vive HMD with native eye tracking as of Feb-2020.

@deddokamu - That's an extra tricky scenario for a number of reasons. We have not announced plans for a 2.0 Elite bundle at this time. In short, since Valve is the currently the only OEM authorized to make 2.0 stations - the supply chain is very narrow. With the launch of HL: Alyx as well as the general disruptions in global supply chain mean there will be tremendous demand for Valve's hardware stock over the next few months.

@madsimilius - Vive HMDs are sold as a kit. In order to get an HMD working, you'd need not only the headset itself but all of the cables to connect it to power and the PC as well as controllers, and the basestations (along with their power supplies). Buying an HMD alone should only be done if you're familar with SteamVR devices and have things like basestations and controllers laying around. If you're giving the HMD power - the status LED on the side of the HMD will display red. Once it's established a connection to SteamVR, that changes to green.

@deddokamu - The Cosmos' external tracking faceplate is compatible with both BS 1.0 and 2.0. It gets tricky with the "Cosmos Elite" as that's specifically a bundle with v1.0 controllers and stations - the controllers in that bundle wouldn't be able to see 2.0 stations.

@sprint Is it actually booting into SteamVR or is windows treating your headset like an extended display. I'd recommend not booting your PC with the HMD attached and researching "Extended" and "Direct" display modes in the context of VR. It sounds like you're PC is connecting to the HMD in extended mode rather than Direct mode - getting that sorted kinda varies PC by PC.

@teachung1 - Almost all of our current documentation for Steaming is currently hosted here. As this feature is still in beta, I don't believe we've rendered out anything like a video. You'd just start a Viveport game to establish a link between SteamVR and Viveport and then you can launch a different SteamVR build on your end. As I said above - our focus is on supporting Viveport builds with this feature and other sources are not officially supported.

@CaptainSparky Pm'ing you info on who you should contact in this case.

@qc777y - I'm glad you were able to isolate it to the linkbox, is much trickier to isolate to the 2nd gen linkboxes because of the I/O changeup. I'd probably have recommend to try and warranty RMA the linkbox before baking the board to see if you could have gotten it replaced under warranty. We made a limited run of "always on" Pro/Cosmos linkboxes for enterprise and arcade customers that were made available via our enterprise team. Otherwise, the "off button" is actually really helpful - albeit it may seem like a UX mistake. The on/off state of the linkbox prevents the HMD from getting permanently damaged from power surges. For instance, if your power went off, then switched back on with a surge - the linkbox defaulting to "off" by default prevents that surge from reaching the HMD.

I just took a macro of the front of the external tracking plate that shows to help dispel rumor. There is an array of 4 sensors on the bottom half of this photo that do not have surface indentations. Now that I'm really spending time thinking about it - the majority of what I'd ID as triad sensors on the faceplate are hidden (maybe 20 of them or so) - only a handful have dimples. The dimples are specifically for occlusion - all of the sensors that have dimples are pointing at odd angles that would be obscured and occluded if we didn't cut out material to create a clear line of sight in the direction it's facing outwards towards. @Fink@TomCgcmfc

@TomCgcmfc Someone from our hardware product team (@stvnxu, @C.T.) may be able to provide an offical number. There appears to be 32 triads from a visual inspection but there are also some smaller sensor types I'm not familiar with and can't visually ID. Can you cite the reports? Generally speaking - everybody who has one in pre-release is under some form of NDA so I'm not even sure where those rumors would be substantiated. The number of sensors doesn't really affect accuracy or precision past a certain point - more sensors basically help prevent occlusion scenarios. Having more doesn't increase the baseline tracking resolution per say but it does improve tracking quality by simply reducing the chance than an occlusion event leads to tracking loss. If I had to guess - I'd assume that people are low-balling the number from photos because not every sensor has a physical indentation like on the first gen Vive. Most of the sensors are hidden behind the plastic housing and don't have corresponding surface features.

@Fink This rumor would be untrue. I don't have an official sensor count to share but I did a quick informal count on a unit and was able to ID what looks to be ~32 or so SteamVR sensors on the faceplate which is more tracking sensors than the original vive rather than less. The tracking quality is on par with every other SteamVR device I've ever used - it's the same high quality basestation tracking we all know and love. It's a pretty seamless experience for the most part. One thing we're on the lookout for is situations where a given title is confused about which controller type you're using. Historically, developers have only queried OpenVR for the user's HMD type and then they simply assumed the controller type matched your HMD which is no longer a valid assumption in 2020 given the mix-and-match ability of SteamVR now that more SteamVR tracked devices are on the market. We've ID'ed handful of cases where this is a problem and are doing 1:1 outreach to solve for those specific cases and we'll continue to test and lookout for other similar cases in the coming months.

@teachung @animorph Wireless streaming to Focus is a Viveport client feature. It's really intended for Viveport builds. You'll need the Viveport client installed to establish the streaming link and also in order to boot into the streaming interface - once SteamVR has successfully linked up with the Focus Plus, you can technically launch other SteamVR enabled executable and get them streaming over to Focus once the streaming session has successfully started. It's unsupported officially but does work presently. Our primary focus around this feature will be centered around Viveport enabled builds as that's QA'able on our platform. Our UX entry point for this will continue to be within the Viveport client, at least in the near term, and we while we can't officially support titles from other platforms, we're not doing anything like actively blocking you from running a generic SteamVR build. Also, as a beta feature, we'd generally recommend arcades/businesses not treat this as a fully realized release.

The earlier devkits for the Focus Plus were actually 3D-printed faceplates that would attach to the original Focus via the USB-C port so there actually is some precedence here. To my knowledge, we have no plans to make a Chirp-enabled faceplate for Cosmos at this time - I believe Chirp's technology specifically needs to be very rigidly integrated into it's housing not lending itself to the modular idea.

No - Cosmos' standard optical tracking solution requires you to be in a well lit room. The only flavor of Cosmos that would support this would be if you were using Cosmos with an External Tracking faceplate so you could leverage base-station tracking which works in the dark.

@Almac - Sending you an email address for an internal team that deals specifically with vive.com orders.

Per storage options, I recommend 15qt Sterilite latch-view containers. They fit every HMD I've personally ever tried - are stackable, and most importantly they'll keep moisture and dust away from the HMD while in storage. Every single one of my HMDs lives in a 15qt Sterilite and it's been core to my organization strategy.